Batboard

I am looking for some direction on a somewhat off topic question.
My agency was called out to a mutual aid event Saturday. The agency we wear supporting is using a 800 Meg trunked system, EDACS standard.
I have a ACU1000 with cables for Jedi and BK portables also vhf hi and low and uhf.
I have 800 and 900 meg. Spectra are wired into the ACU 1000.
The agency was using MA portables.
I have not had any experience programming trunked radios.
I ended up having them go to there CLMARS channel on 800 and I patched that to our vhf CLMARS.
How hard is it to program a MTX or other radio so next time I well be able to patch what they want?
Does the MTX have to have a full kneepad and display?
Would I be better off using a MA cable for my ACU1000?
Thank
Brien

If you've made mutual aid arrangements with neighboring agencies and/or counties, you should contact those agencies or counties for assistance with programming radios on their trunking system(s).

Here is a prime example of why the "National Interoperability" channels were set aside by the FCC. It is also
the channels that most states have listed for mutual aid at incidents where agencies that normally don't
work together can talk to each other.

I have yet to be at many multi agency incidents that cover more than a couple of blocks. Major forest fires
don't fall under this and are usually on national fire fire channels. These interop channels provide additional
radio channels that allow working incidents to be moved off of the normal agency working channels and
frees them up for additional channels.

Gateways are great, but they require having a minimum of two radios programmed up on the agency channels.
Like has been said for many years, we can provide the how to do this, but can't control the politics to make
it happen.

As I travel around the country, it amazes me as to the large number of people that lead the charge, that either
have never heard about the "National Interoperability" channels or just plain refuse to use them. they would
rather tie up and in some cases bring their local radio system to it's knees, rather than switch and use a better
way of doing communications with multiple agencies. The inbred of "This is the way we always did it, I am
not going to change now" is something that just seems to never end. The worst place Iave seen this is
the area just north of New York City. The fire departments in that region have this attitude that if you come
to help me, you had better have your radios on "OUR CHANNEL". Mutual aid channels doesn't even exist in their
vocabulary. They won't hear of such talk. I am sure there are other parts of the country that are the same way.

Jim

BrienD wrote:I am looking for some direction on a somewhat off topic question.
My agency was called out to a mutual aid event Saturday. The agency we wear supporting is using a 800 Meg trunked system, EDACS standard.
I have a ACU1000 with cables for Jedi and BK portables also vhf hi and low and uhf.
I have 800 and 900 meg. Spectra are wired into the ACU 1000.
The agency was using MA portables.
I have not had any experience programming trunked radios.
I ended up having them go to there CLMARS channel on 800 and I patched that to our vhf CLMARS.
How hard is it to program a MTX or other radio so next time I well be able to patch what they want?
Does the MTX have to have a full kneepad and display?
Would I be better off using a MA cable for my ACU1000?
Thank
Brien

Our county fire agencies have their act together. We share some BK cashes and it works well.
We don’t have time when we get activated to call a coms. guy from some other agency. We can go any ware in California on short notice. I was just wondering how hard it might be to make some code plugs for my radios and I could just load them when I need theme.
We are going to an local Interoperability plan. It sounds like we may have run out of money for a wile like everyone else.

CLEMARS exists so you don't have to have a radio that yaps on every agency's special little piece of the pie

You are never going to put a MTX - keypad/display or not - (or any other Motorola radio) on an EDACS system. EDACS is a propriatory GE/TYCO/COM-NET/MA/COM/HARRIS protocol, just like Smartzone is a Motorola protocol.

If the agency you are assisting is wanting you to be on their system, then they are going to need to provide you with at least one radio for your ACU-1000.

You will be much better off switching to and operating on the mutual aid channels. What people seem to forget is while you are having your major incident over in a little corner of the jurisdiction, it's still business as usual everywhere else. Its crazy to tie up a significant portion of a system's resources for tactical operations on a single incident, move the tactical traffic off to the interop channels. Like Jim said, most incidents are no larger than a couple of blocks.

The bigger issue is that patched trunked radio audio sounds like butt, unless you spend a lot of time doing level adjustments. When the patch is trunk-->trunk or trunk-->P25, it sounds even worse and is even harder to equalize. For just this reason alone you're better off sticking with simplex analog for multi-agency events.

I did try to get the brass to use CLMARS thy opted to use some of their MA radios with our cp.
I do love how I can always get a good cross section of options when I ask a question.
Thank you for all of the info and I well look into a MA/Com cable just incase.

motorola_otaku wrote:The bigger issue is that patched trunked radio audio sounds like butt, unless you spend a lot of time doing level adjustments. When the patch is trunk-->trunk or trunk-->P25, it sounds even worse and is even harder to equalize. For just this reason alone you're better off sticking with simplex analog for multi-agency events.

I have seen, not one word of lie, because wavetar can back me up on this, a Uniden CB radio hooked through a ACU1000 to a SZOL system.....breaker breaker come in ambulance dispatch